2010-02-28

Photoshop really was first marketed in February 1990. The Sgt.'s Pepper in those days were brothers Thomas and John Knoll. Thomas remained among the Photoshop developers until the current version, CS4. John moved into graphic effects in the movie industry, says Wikipedia.

Whatever advantages Potoshop has given us, even Lars van den Brink, a photographer who likes to play with Photoshop to tell his stories ("Sometimes, it's like I summarise an hour in a single picture"), and who was interviewed for the NRC's Cultural supplement last Friday, admits in the end: "Real life is so surprising; you cannot beat that with Photoshop."

Just a link, twittered in real-time by co-clubmember René, from yesterday's Culture Fair:

Hopefully, we got a handful of people interested in our camera club. I'd spent more than enough time on designing a flyer, printing some pictures, getting the laptop + large screen ready to show club members' photos to passers-by, etc. And then the three of us spent a whole evening on being there.

The laptop's screenshow was quite effective, by the way: a lot of people stopped to watch it. TV-like screens apparently are irresistible and as marketeers know, getting people to pay attention and (literally) stop is the beginning! Then you can start talking with them.

Some of the musicians playing at the fair were really good, as well. Special recommendation: check out guitar player Casper van Vulpen on Youtube. Enjoy!

2010-02-06

Rumours had been around in the internet for more than half a year already, so I am a bit late to discover that the recently released Sony α550 camera has a trick inbuilt to make HDR pictures. HDR = High Dynamic Range and means that you can get pictures that show detail in the dark parts as well as in the light parts. Without HDR you'd get details in the dark parts but a pure white spot of clouds, or the other way around: well-deatiled clouds but completely black shadows. The α550 takes two pictures successively and combines them automatically to an HDR picture! That is almost the ideal I was waiting for, as I admitted some time ago: an HDR-sensor. Anyone interested in my "old" α700? ;-)

2010-02-04

The fieldfares returned later in the same day, and that time my camera was ready. Admittedly, I still had to crop the picture enormously, because the birds mainly stayed in the back of the garden and I "only" have a 300 mm (450 mm equivalent, if you count the crop factor).